Compendium helps cause of justice, “opens people up to the horizons of charity,” says Pope

This morning Pope John Paul II, receiving participants in the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace called the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, "an instrument that can help Christians in their daily commitment to make the world more just, in the Gospel perspective of a humanism that is truly solidary."

He noted that participants in the First World Congress of Ecclesial Offices Working for Justice and Peace had "reflected on the most adequate forms for proclaiming the Gospel in the complex realities of our times."

The Holy Father asked that the Church’s social doctrine "be made known, spread in its entirety and witnessed to with a constant and coherent pastoral action."

"In times like ours," John Paul II added, "marked by globalization of the social question, the Church invites everyone to recognize and affirm the centrality of the human person in every milieu and in every manifestation of sociality."

He emphasized how the Church’s social doctrine "opens people up to the horizons of charity. In fact, this is the hour of charity, including social and political charity, that is capable of animating, with the grace of the Gospel, the human realities of work, the economy and politics, pointing out the paths of peace, justice and friendship among peoples."